Writing Program Administration

This article looks back to the 1998 special issue of WPA themed on collaborative administration and contrasts patterns in the articles in that issue—written almost entirely by four-year-college and university WPAs—with the particular conditions of one TYC writing program to argue that collaboration is equally valuable and vital in TYC programs but for different reasons than at other types of institutions. The specific material conditions of TYC writing programs—including diversity of disciplinary expertise among the faculty, and complex power dynamics—create a setting in which WPAs must build deep and wide collaborative structures that are both strong and radically inclusive. This article concludes with a list of design principles to guide the ongoing work of creating sustainable collaborative TYC writing programs.

Our Story Our motivations for developing this special issue of Across the Disciplines began in 2011. At that point all of the editors were working at the Michigan State University (MSU) Writing Center, Trixie Smith as the director and the rest of us as graduate students. We began focusing on the issues of graduate writing support through our involvement with the graduate writing groups hosted through the MSU Writing Center, conducting research on the benefits of such groups. When the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department began an initiative to create research clusters that bring faculty, staff, and students together to engage in conducting professional academic research and developing professional publications, we decided that a research cluster focusing on graduate writing would be ideal. We participated in this Graduate Writing Research Cluster for the two years that we were all still at MSU, and this special issue is a product of that participation. Working with man...

This study investigates the impact of metalinguistic reflection as a strategy to improve the learning of relative clauses in English. The research was conducted with 11 Mexican high school students (B2 level), comparing an experimental group that used metalinguistic reflection with a control group.

The results of the pre- and post-intervention tests showed that the experimental group made significantly greater improvements in the identification, comprehension, and production of relative clauses. While the control group also improved, the difference was not statistically significant. These findings suggest that metalinguistic reflection is a key pedagogical tool for strengthening grammatical competence in a second language, enabling students not only to recognize but also to use complex structures more precisely and autonomously.

Black Studies programs across the nation have been in a fight for their survival for years. As colleges and universities choose the proverbial “ax over the scalpel” to cut budgets in the wake of decreased state and federal funding, Black Studies and other area study programs are often the first on the chopping block. Lack of interest and low enrollment are commonly cited as justifications for slashing or underfunding Black Studies programs, many of which are still in their infancy relative to other academic fields. #BlackLivesMatter is (re)igniting a resurgence of public displays of resilience and resistance, especially among Millennial college students. Moreover, there appears to be a much less understood phenomenon of the resurrection of Black Studies Programs across the country, as this generation seeks informed ways to access critically and analyze the value, or often lack thereof, of Black lives in America. Drawing from hegemonic theory, theory of consent, Afro-pessimism, and s...

As institutions that include Writing Studies (Rhetoric and Composition, Business, Technical and Professional Writing) in their curriculum at various levels increasingly move to include more digital technology infrastructural support for classes, faculty who have scholarly expertise in various technologies are often being called upon, through either necessity to complete their own agendas or because of additional departmental and college needs, to do service work beyond required committee work. Oftentimes, this work is invisible. This article reports the results on interviews collected from 23 faculty members regarding types of technologically-related service being done. It discusses the changing nature of the types of service done by faculty we term Writing Program Technologists (WPTs). It also discusses the connections between shifts in technology and infrastructure at various institutions and the varying ways that compensation of the WPT occurs depending upon personal as well as institutional needs, desires, and constraints. Making visible this often invisible labor can provide information for faculty who are trying to develop arguments for more equitable compensation for this work that in terms of time expended and intellectual labor involved goes beyond other forms of service expectations.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have long been at the forefront of promoting educational equity and social justice. This study explores the role of critical pedagogy at HBCUs in shaping global leaders who graduated between 1900 and 1980. Using a qualitative case study approach, the research examines how an education grounded in social justice principles influenced the careers of seven global leaders. Through archival research and document analysis, the study investigates how these leaders challenged systemic oppression and contributed to global change. The findings highlight key implications for higher education and global leadership, underscoring the potential of HBCUs to foster more inclusive approaches to diplomacy.

This article uses a disparate impact analysis framework to assess the impact of a policy change in writing assessment that roughly doubled the proportion of students placing into college English at Butte College, a two-year college in California. After establishing the disparate impact of placement, we tracked how students performed in college English, subsequent college courses, and overall college completion under the new policy. We found that substantially more students completed college English compared to previous cohorts, with Asian, African American, Latinx, and Native American students' completion of college English doubling or tripling. Upon taking subsequent college courses, students placing into college English under the new policy performed as well as those who had qualified for college English under the more restrictive policy. Overall college completion outcomes, including degree completion and meeting the criteria for transferring to 4-year universities, have generally improved and become more equitable since the 2011 policy change. These findings suggest that broadening access to college English can be a powerful lever for reducing racial and ethnic gaps in the completion of college English and may help to reduce gaps in the attainment of other, longer-term college completion outcomes.

Writing involves a complex web of deliberations as writers make specific choices from their repertoire of grammatical resources. However, curriculum and assessment criteria that favour top-down prescriptions of writing marginalise the agency of the writer (Gardner, 2012). Conversely, we posit a bottom-up process that integrates grammar teaching with the agentic role of the writer as they make ongoing writerly choices. This study draws on Myhill's work (2012, 2022) on the teaching of 'grammar as choice' by exploring the impact of explicitly teaching six embodied grammatical concepts: generating energy; tracking motion; scanning the scene; creating perspective; focusing; and zooming in. The study demonstrates how explicitly teaching these concepts to 11 Year Five students during short, personalised writing conferences improved the range and application of their linguistic choices, their writerly agency and the quality and quantity of their writing. The study contributes to the growing body of research that emphasises students' agency as writers.

https://compositionforum.com/issue/39/cynthia-lewiecki-wilson-interview.php
This interview tracks the early days of the field, the importance of mentorship, and the work we have left to do. We opted for an informal conversation, conducted over Skype in late 2017. The interview is a testament to Cynthia's brilliance and humility.

This essay examines what thinking with disability brings to sitespecific rhetorical work, which is work where rhetoricians gather to study location-related texts. Adapting the rhetorical triangle, I suggest that this work is fundamentally about the relationships between communicators, texts, and audiences, and my focus on the importance of including the perspectives of disabled and/or disability activists adds the "angle" of access. This "angle" requires reconsideration of how texts, speakers, and audiences connect and interact, as inaccessibility hinders and/or excludes some communicators, disregards some audiences, and renders some texts illegible. At the same time, thinking with disability in sitespecific rhetorical work provides opportunities to support communities of disability scholars and scholarship, to create and implement accessible rhetorical methods, and to imagine inclusion as an iterative and fluid process. To examine these ideas, the essay shifts between articulating general principles and methodologies and offering specific examples from the Disability and Accessibility working group at the 2019 Rhetoric Society of

English 299 is a two-unit credit/no credit elective, capped at fifteen students per section, intended to help first year composition students become more effective editors of their own writing. The class provides a hands-on environment to help students with sentence-level editing since the writing center on campus traditionally focuses on more global concerns. Incoming California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) students who are deemed by the California State University system as needing additional support to satisfy their first year writing requirement (so-called "Early Start" students, explained further below) are placed in English 299 and given priority enrollment in the first year composition (FYC) course of their choice. The class follows a coaching model that helps students develop confidence as editors of their own work and demystifies the writing process.

This essay seeks to explain the history that led to the establishment of FirstYear Writing at Binghamton University, a program which offers a set of electives that complement disciplinespecific and writingacrossthecurriculum courses while providing firstyear students a common experience in and comprehensive introduction to college writing.

Recently, I participated in a conference workshop on issues in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. One of the attendees remarked that, because she taught Advanced Writing, she had no need to think about second-language writers. This notion, that second-language writers are easy to identify and do not exist outside of segregated sections of ESOL courses, stems from what the authors of this collection refer to as composition's tacit policy of English Only (1). The policy, which champions standard, academic English above all others, keeps instructors from following the best pedagogical practices for second-language writers. The lack of scholarship and teacher training in language diversity doesn't help, with scholars having a tendency to align themselves on one side of the conversation-either TESOL instructors focusing on ESOL issues or composition instructors focusing on dialects. Given these concerns, Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda's collection is an important contribution to the field. Issues in language diversity are rarely given attention in the first-year composition classroom, but these essays reveal the benefits of this topic to all composition classes. The collection features eighteen essays, divided equally between two sections. The first, "Struggling with 'English Only' in Composition," discusses the evolution of language and provides background on how English Only policies have manifested in the college composition classroom. Part 1 has essays from scholars such as John Trimbur, Gail E. Hawisher, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Paul Kei Matsuda. The second section, "Responses to Struggling with 'English Only' in Composition" offers calls to action for increasing linguistic diversity and a discussion of the real challenges presented by attending to these issues. This section begins with Shirley Wilson Logan's discussion of language and ownership and ends with a reflection by Victor Villanueva. Throughout the collection, the authors continually prove the need for language awareness in the classroom. The problem, Horner asserts in the book's introduction, is that instructors falsely assume that their students are native speakers of English (1). By exposing attitudes promoting monolingualism, the book makes clear the need to study, teach, and assess language in all of its variations. In the first essay of the collection, "Linguistic Memory and the Uneasy Settlement of U.S. English," Trimbur notes the United States' tendency to forget its heritage as a linguistically diverse nation. He provides a historical overview of the evolution of language in the US, including dialects, pidgins, and creoles born out of the travel and expansion of settlers. For example, African American slaves used a type of plantation creole as a form of secrecy,

What students need most from instructors' written response on their texts is commentary that evokes a sense of exchange. Teachers often believe that their job is to point out the deficits in a student's paper and help eliminate those deficits. While this is a part of the function of response, it should not be the primary goal of feedback; rather, students need comments that will help them gain a sense of themselves as writers who are accepted into the college writing community. Grounding the argument in the scholarship of response, this thesis develops an approach to teacher response that narrows the topic into three problem areas: the tension between responding to content issues versus responding to the distraction of surface error; the tension between promoting mastery of academic language versus encouraging development of student voice; and the tension between the reality of teacher authority and the teacher's desire to empower students to take charge of their own learning. The author's purpose is to clarify the goals of response as well as the act itself in order to help eliminate the confusion and frustration inexperienced instructors may feel when they respond to student writing. New teachers and experienced teachers who are new to writing intensive courses should find this thesis to be a useful guide to responding to student writing.

What students need most from instructors' written response on their texts is commentary that evokes a sense of exchange. Teachers often believe that their job is to point out the deficits in a student's paper and help eliminate those deficits. While this is a part of the function of response, it should not be the primary goal of feedback; rather, students need comments that will help them gain a sense of themselves as writers who are accepted into the college writing community. Grounding the argument in the scholarship of response, this thesis develops an approach to teacher response that narrows the topic into three problem areas: the tension between responding to content issues versus responding to the distraction of surface error; the tension between promoting mastery of academic language versus encouraging development of student voice; and the tension between the reality of teacher authority and the teacher's desire to empower students to take charge of their own learning. The author's purpose is to clarify the goals of response as well as the act itself in order to help eliminate the confusion and frustration inexperienced instructors may feel when they respond to student writing. New teachers and experienced teachers who are new to writing intensive courses should find this thesis to be a useful guide to responding to student writing.

7his article describes the educational reform efforts surrounding writing placement in one state context. We propose that placement offers a particularly useful engagement point because it is often controlled by state-level policies and it directly impacts the lived experience of first-year college students. To document how we worked across institutions in our state, we describe a series of events that occurred over several years and that fostered collaborative exchanges. 1hen, we explore the challenges and opportunities afforded by our long-term engagement with policymakers. Ultimately, we propose strategies that writing program administrators might consider as they become engaged with state-level higher education policy.

Thomas Miller (he/him) is professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, where he served as writing program administrator, graduate director, and vice provost for faculty affairs. He received awards for his diversity leadership, teaching, mentoring, advocacy for shared governance, and research. He is a recipient of the Mina Shaughnessy Award for his book The Formation of College English (1997). His current research examines the challenging opportunities facing early-career faculty and staff leaders.

As enrollment of students in online courses has steadily increased over the last few decades, very little attention has been given to online instructor evaluation. This is an area of online education that needs additional research to better ascertain the current state of online instructor evaluation as well as discover ways to improve its effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to identify how institutions evaluate online instructors and why. Findings indicated that the post-secondary institutions studied utilized many types of evaluation including student evaluations, administrative evaluations, peer evaluations, self-evaluations, and metrics in their evaluations. Recommendations for the use of triangulation, course observation rubrics, formative evaluations, and metrics as part of an online instructor evaluation system are provided.

A study was conducted to determine whether a significant correlation existed between an essay's letter grade and five important factors of syntactic maturity (clause length, t-un3,t length, sentence length, clauses per t-unit, and t-units per sentence). A total of 45 essays-15 A, 15 B, and 15 C papers as graded b five junior college English teachers-were assigned a point value and analyzed for a correlation between the grade and each of the five syntactic maturity factors. The results indicated a slight correlation between the grades and the number of clauses per t-unit and the number of t-units per sentence, suggesting that the teachers were influenced somewhat in their grading by the writer's ability to build compound sentences. The second portion of the study was an analysis of the difference between each of the three grade groups. Here, the number of words per sentence was found to be the most significant factor. The significant difference between the A and the C papers was possibly due to the fac: that the A students connected independent clauses with semicolons more frequently than did the other students ana thus produced much longer sentences and more t-units per sentence. While the results infer that sentence combining exercises may help increase the quality of a student's writing, factors of syntactic maturity overall }tad only a low correlation with the quality of writing. (HTH)

This dissertation will broaden the purview of recent scholarship pertaining to socially just writing assessments by making connections among assemblage theory and materialism, studies of ecological and anti-racist assessments, and studies of writing center work, to ground theoretical conversations in everyday practices. Focusing on systemic oppression in the neoliberal university and consciously using assemblage theory as a mechanism for confronting multiliteracies allows writing center directors to see the constant movement and reshaping of students' knowledges as they approach different environments, different courses, and different genres. Notions of intra-relatedness and intertwinings evident in assemblage theory are essential to this dissertation's consideration of pedagogy and administration. Expanding upon research on ecological and anti-racist assessment practices, I argue that it is vitally important for writing program administrators and writing center directors to bring complex views of literacies and identities to their assessment protocols. I further argue that this practice can be aided by frameworks based in assemblage theory. Using archival research and critical discourse analysis, this project explores one WC's history and current practices in a large public, urban university system as a case study. Acknowledging the burden of negotiating hurdles set up by corporatized university structures, this dissertation examines the ways institutional pressures can shape v assessments, and makes suggestions for new, socially just approaches relying on assemblage theory that follow current trends in writing assessment. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, my gratitude goes out to Livia Katz, who generously allowed me to analyze and poke around her writing center for this study. Livia is a dynamo, and her tutors and students are very lucky to have her fighting for them. I hope to be half the writing center director she is throughout my career. I am also grateful to Pat Licklider and Bob Crozier for taking the time to record oral history interviews with me. Pat sat through the interview twice due to a technical glitch, and also allowed me to reference her personal files from her time at John Jay for this project, which makes her an absolute saint. Thank you also to the librarians and archivists at the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay, and to the interlibrary loan librarians at both Taylor Memorial Library at Centenary University and the Mina Rees Library at the Graduate Center. I am also unendingly grateful to Mark McBeth, my committee chair, without whom I would never have completed this journey. His unflagging support, generosity, and brilliance (and knack of finding archives where none are supposed to exist) continues to inspire me. Mark, I have been incredibly fortunate to have had you as an advisor, and I hope I can live up to the care, encouragement, and critiques with which you guided me during my graduate studies as a mentor to my own students. Sondra Perl and Jessica Yood, two of my committee members, have also been instrumental in helping me achieve this goal, and I thank them for their advice and presence during my time at the Graduate Center. Sondra and Jessica, both of your classes shaped so much of my thinking for this project. I'm so grateful to both of you, and to you, Sondra, for taking on this project with me despite its late hour in your time at CUNY. Happy retirement! Carmen Kynard, my fourth reader on the committee, has been inspiring me to experiment in the classroom and remain critical of writing studies since she sat in on the John Jay Teaching Practicum with me in 2013. Carmen, Mark, and Tim McCormack, the former Deputy Writing vii Program Director at John Jay, taught me to teach, and to love teaching. Thanks to all of you for giving me that wonderful gift, and for showing me the importance of having fun with my pedagogy. I also thank the past and current members of CompComm, the student composition and rhetoric group at the CUNY Graduate Center, for their emotional, professional, and scholarly support. You are truly a family for me, and I hope future students realize what a special group we have at the GC. I particularly recognize Seth Graves, Andrew Lucchesi, and Sean Molloy for their friendship and thoughtful collaborations, as well as Robert Greco, Lindsey Albracht, and Rohit Lanez-Sharma for their sharp peer reviews of my chapter drafts. I could not have done this without you folks next to me. Robert, your friendship and input has influenced my approach to so much of my work. Thank you for geeking out with me about politics, Doctor Who, and the latest CCC issue in the cafeteria for so many years. Thanks also to Emilia Phillips of UNC Greensboro and Emily Anderson of Centenary University for their companionship during long days of writing this summer and for being such strong, engaging, supportive presences in my life. I also thank Alicia Clark-Barnes for her friendship and input as I began developing the ideas for this project at the NEWCA conference in 2015. My professional gratitude extends to my colleagues in the English department at Centenary University, especially my chair, Sharon Decker, and my long-time mentor, Lisa Mastrangelo, who have supported me personally and professionally this year. I'm lucky to be part of such a wonderful department. Lisa, thank you for your teaching, scholarship, mentorship, and friendship that has been with me professionally since I can remember. Thank you, as well, to my staff of peer tutors in the Writing Collaboratory at Centenary University, who continue to inspire me and challenge me with new ideas. I'm grateful to be part of such a remarkable group in our writing center! viii On a personal note, thanks to Laura for being a sounding board for my frustrations and for checking in on me periodically to make sure I didn't perish in a dark library corner, laptop open and coffee mug in-hand. Thanks to my family and in-laws for their confidence and cheerleading. In particular, thanks to my parents, Tom and Jeanne, and my brothers, Michael and Glen, for inspiring my love of learning and writing, and for collectively being my "last homely house" when I needed a break. Thanks to my cats, Rocky and Blues, for always knowing when I needed a couple of fuzzy muses to keep going. But mostly, thanks to my husband, Dave, a person who took on more than his share of house chores and who never complained when asked to turn down the TV volume so that I could concentrate-even during the playoffs. I'll never be able to fully express my gratitude for his love, his support, and for taking care of me on the most difficult writing days. I love you, Dave. … Lastly, thanks to NJ Transit: Some days you tried your best to foil my attempts at traveling to my research site. Some days you provided me with three hours of solid writing time. We've had a love-hate relationship for seven years and over 5,000 hours together (yes, I did the math). I'm not sure if this expression of gratitude is sincere or sarcastic-probably both-but anyway… thanks a lot.

This dissertation will broaden the purview of recent scholarship pertaining to socially just writing assessments by making connections among assemblage theory and materialism, studies of ecological and anti-racist assessments, and studies of writing center work, to ground theoretical conversations in everyday practices. Focusing on systemic oppression in the neoliberal university and consciously using assemblage theory as a mechanism for confronting multiliteracies allows writing center directors to see the constant movement and reshaping of students' knowledges as they approach different environments, different courses, and different genres. Notions of intra-relatedness and intertwinings evident in assemblage theory are essential to this dissertation's consideration of pedagogy and administration. Expanding upon research on ecological and anti-racist assessment practices, I argue that it is vitally important for writing program administrators and writing center directors to bring complex views of literacies and identities to their assessment protocols. I further argue that this practice can be aided by frameworks based in assemblage theory. Using archival research and critical discourse analysis, this project explores one WC's history and current practices in a large public, urban university system as a case study. Acknowledging the burden of negotiating hurdles set up by corporatized university structures, this dissertation examines the ways institutional pressures can shape v assessments, and makes suggestions for new, socially just approaches relying on assemblage theory that follow current trends in writing assessment. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, my gratitude goes out to Livia Katz, who generously allowed me to analyze and poke around her writing center for this study. Livia is a dynamo, and her tutors and students are very lucky to have her fighting for them. I hope to be half the writing center director she is throughout my career. I am also grateful to Pat Licklider and Bob Crozier for taking the time to record oral history interviews with me. Pat sat through the interview twice due to a technical glitch, and also allowed me to reference her personal files from her time at John Jay for this project, which makes her an absolute saint. Thank you also to the librarians and archivists at the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay, and to the interlibrary loan librarians at both Taylor Memorial Library at Centenary University and the Mina Rees Library at the Graduate Center. I am also unendingly grateful to Mark McBeth, my committee chair, without whom I would never have completed this journey. His unflagging support, generosity, and brilliance (and knack of finding archives where none are supposed to exist) continues to inspire me. Mark, I have been incredibly fortunate to have had you as an advisor, and I hope I can live up to the care, encouragement, and critiques with which you guided me during my graduate studies as a mentor to my own students. Sondra Perl and Jessica Yood, two of my committee members, have also been instrumental in helping me achieve this goal, and I thank them for their advice and presence during my time at the Graduate Center. Sondra and Jessica, both of your classes shaped so much of my thinking for this project. I'm so grateful to both of you, and to you, Sondra, for taking on this project with me despite its late hour in your time at CUNY. Happy retirement! Carmen Kynard, my fourth reader on the committee, has been inspiring me to experiment in the classroom and remain critical of writing studies since she sat in on the John Jay Teaching Practicum with me in 2013. Carmen, Mark, and Tim McCormack, the former Deputy Writing vii Program Director at John Jay, taught me to teach, and to love teaching. Thanks to all of you for giving me that wonderful gift, and for showing me the importance of having fun with my pedagogy. I also thank the past and current members of CompComm, the student composition and rhetoric group at the CUNY Graduate Center, for their emotional, professional, and scholarly support. You are truly a family for me, and I hope future students realize what a special group we have at the GC. I particularly recognize Seth Graves, Andrew Lucchesi, and Sean Molloy for their friendship and thoughtful collaborations, as well as Robert Greco, Lindsey Albracht, and Rohit Lanez-Sharma for their sharp peer reviews of my chapter drafts. I could not have done this without you folks next to me. Robert, your friendship and input has influenced my approach to so much of my work. Thank you for geeking out with me about politics, Doctor Who, and the latest CCC issue in the cafeteria for so many years. Thanks also to Emilia Phillips of UNC Greensboro and Emily Anderson of Centenary University for their companionship during long days of writing this summer and for being such strong, engaging, supportive presences in my life. I also thank Alicia Clark-Barnes for her friendship and input as I began developing the ideas for this project at the NEWCA conference in 2015. My professional gratitude extends to my colleagues in the English department at Centenary University, especially my chair, Sharon Decker, and my long-time mentor, Lisa Mastrangelo, who have supported me personally and professionally this year. I'm lucky to be part of such a wonderful department. Lisa, thank you for your teaching, scholarship, mentorship, and friendship that has been with me professionally since I can remember. Thank you, as well, to my staff of peer tutors in the Writing Collaboratory at Centenary University, who continue to inspire me and challenge me with new ideas. I'm grateful to be part of such a remarkable group in our writing center! viii On a personal note, thanks to Laura for being a sounding board for my frustrations and for checking in on me periodically to make sure I didn't perish in a dark library corner, laptop open and coffee mug in-hand. Thanks to my family and in-laws for their confidence and cheerleading. In particular, thanks to my parents, Tom and Jeanne, and my brothers, Michael and Glen, for inspiring my love of learning and writing, and for collectively being my "last homely house" when I needed a break. Thanks to my cats, Rocky and Blues, for always knowing when I needed a couple of fuzzy muses to keep going. But mostly, thanks to my husband, Dave, a person who took on more than his share of house chores and who never complained when asked to turn down the TV volume so that I could concentrate-even during the playoffs. I'll never be able to fully express my gratitude for his love, his support, and for taking care of me on the most difficult writing days. I love you, Dave. … Lastly, thanks to NJ Transit: Some days you tried your best to foil my attempts at traveling to my research site. Some days you provided me with three hours of solid writing time. We've had a love-hate relationship for seven years and over 5,000 hours together (yes, I did the math). I'm not sure if this expression of gratitude is sincere or sarcastic-probably both-but anyway… thanks a lot.

espanolEl creciente interes en el desarrollo de la escritura en la educacion superior ha dado lugar al surgimiento de diversos programas que buscan apoyar a los estudiantes en la dificil tarea de aprender a comunicarse academicamente en el contexto de sus disciplinas. En este marco, el presente articulo da cuenta de las opciones teoricas y de algunas acciones estrategicas consideradas en el diseno de un programa de escritura en el contexto universitario chileno. Se discute la integracion de modelos teoricos de diversa naturaleza, senalando el aporte de cada una de estas lineas para alcanzar el objetivo del programa. Asimismo, se detallan las decisiones estrategicas vinculadas a su creacion y se argumenta su importancia para disenar un programa organico y coherente con las necesidades y los principios de la institucion. El articulo pretende contribuir al ambito del diseno de programas de escritura que puedan responder a las crecientes necesidades de formacion en escritura que enfrent...

Divided into two broad sections, "Instituting Change" and "Instituting Practice," this handbook is a collection of essays from established authorities in the field addressing problems and issues both local and global. The first section, "Instituting Change," discusses WPA work as it is situated within the college or university and within the wider landscape of academia; chapters address, for example, "Politics and the WPA" (Douglas D. Hesse), "Certifying the Knowledge of WPAs" (Gail Stygall), "Teaching a Graduate Course in Writing Program Administration" (Edward M. White), "Moving Up the Administrative Ladder" (Susan H. McLeod), and "Part-Time/Adjunct Issues: Working Toward Change" (Eileen E. Schell). The second section, "Instituting Practice," addresses the myriad practical problems WPAs experience, offering suggestions for action but also reflections on and thoughtful rationales for recommended practices. Topics include, for example, "Figuring it Out: Writing Programs in the Context of University Budgets" (Chris M. Anson), "Hard Work and Hard Data: Using Statistics to Help Your Program" (Gregory R. Glau), "Writing Program Administration and Instructional Computing" (Ken S. McAllister and Cynthia L. Selfe). The volume also includes an excellent annotated bibliography.

Drawn from a conference that addressed the role of sentence combining in the teaching of writing, the papers in this collection are divided into three sections: the theory of sentence combining, research in sentence combining, and sentence combining in the classroom. The 22 papers discuss a variety of topics, including the following: (1) sentence combining, style, and the psychology of composition; (2) the effect of sentence combining instruction on reading comprehension; (3) syntactic manipulation and scores in reading comprehension; (4) sentence combining in a comprehensive language framework; (5) developing paragraph power thror. sentence combining; 16) parallel sentence combining studies in grades nine and eleven; (7) multivariate analysis in sentence combining research; (8) problems in analyzing maturity in college and adult writing; (9) sentence analysis and combining as a means of improving the expository style of advanced college students; (10) sentence combining in training programs for business, industry, and government; (11) teaching the logic of sentence connection; and (12) sentence combining and composing in the classroom. The collection concludes with a bibliography of materials concerning sentence combining and writing instruction. (HOD)

The efficacy of traditional letter or numerical grading for composition classes has been questioned for decades, but still, most instructors use conventional grading systems in their writing classes. This article outlines a century-long history of research and experimentation, focusing on the use of grading contracts in composition courses to increase grading consistency, incentivize more effective writing approaches, break down problematic classroom power dynamics, reward improvement, reduce race or gender bias, and encourage self-directed learning. Most scholarship on grading contracts in composition focuses on individual case studies of particular contract implementations, but recent turns toward more comparative, large-scale studies indicate the potential of the field to better understand the usefulness of grading contracts. Existing research demonstrates the promise of grading contracts to create more egalitarian classrooms in which students assume more ownership of their work, provided instructors embrace the opportunities for class discussion and negotiation that contracts afford. No contract is one-size-fits-all, so instructors can use the examples outlined in this history to craft grading contracts that make the most sense for their goals and instructional pedagogy.

Working with student writing is one of academia's most labor-intensive activities. All writers need—and benefit from—readers with whom they can interact as a paper takes shape, skilled coaches who can offer appropriate guidance as the writer moves through the ...

Educators of graduate students of English who are simultaneously teaching undergraduate composition courses should focus on how the study of institutional history might shed light on contemporary praxis. The Cultural and Critical Studies Ph.D. Program in the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) English Department combines an innovative approach to theoretically aware and historically based advanced work in English Studies with a comprehensive teacher-training program. Seminar work connects teaching and theory, disciplinary history and current practices, cultural studies and composition. Within a cultural studies context, the required two-semester teaning seminars taken by all first-time composition teachers are designed to help them compose their stances as teachers. These seminars focus on intensive reading of, followed by written assignments about, important historical texts concerning the "social mission" of English teachers. Students must reflect on their pedagogical goals, assignments, and philosophies of education. Extensive quotes from three papers by different students show that a range of positions results from these assignments. These texts represent teachers in the process of constructing and revising self-conscious positions about teaching composition within the structures of the contemporary department and university, as well as reflect diverse ruadings of institutional history. A shift in the paradigm of graduate training, as exemplified by the University of Pittsburgh's program, constitutes an important and progressive aspect of a cu1turR1 studies curriculum in English graduate education.

In the past years, different Hispanic countries have witnessed a rise in Plain Language (Lenguaje Claro) initiatives by public institutions, including the publication of Plain Language guides. Since these types of actions seek to influence how a linguistic community uses language through training, regulations, teaching materials, etc., it is useful to evaluate them in light of the most recent findings in Applied Linguistics and Writing Pedagogy. In this article, we analyze a corpus of Plain Legal Language guides in Spanish to identify patterns in the understanding of clarity within them. Results show that these guides differ very little from one another and that they have tended to replicate a series of abstract rules focused on grammatical accuracy and style correctness ("write short sentences," "avoid the passive voice," "respect the subject, verb, object order") that ended up becoming universal principles for clarity. This current form-focused approach fails to grasp that clarity is not achieved by mechanically following form-centered rules at the sentence level. Moreover, it contradicts the most recent findings in writing pedagogy and may even be what causes so much resistance in certain professionals. Thus, we draw on the theoretical principles of Myhill et al. (2020) writing instruction proposal to offer new directions on how to approach plain language teaching and to design impactful plain language policies and resources. We argue that plain language should even be a part of general legal writing instruction, but for that to happen, we need to think of plain language, not as a set of rules to be followed, but as a set of literacy skills that are useful for any legal practitioner.

The first volume in AAHE and Campus Compact" s series on service-learning in the disciplines, the book discusses the microrevolution in college-level Composition through service-learning. The essays in this volume show why service-learning and ...

El presente estudio tiene por objetivo identificar, describir y explicar las actitudes hacia el plagio de los estudiantes de la carrera de Administración de Empresas de dos universidades privadas en Arequipa. Se emplea una metodología cualitativa y la técnica  de análisis de contenido. Los datos se han obtenido a partir de la información proveniente de la aplicación de una guía de entrevista individual y una guía de grupo focal. Se han realizaron 20 entrevistas individuales y 2 grupos focales a un total de 20 estudiantes ingresantes (10 mujeres y 10 varones). Las categorías surgidas del discurso expresado por los participantes son: (a) conocimiento del fenómeno; (b) actitud permisiva hacia el plagio; (c) el plagio como facilitador social; (d) consecuencias; y (e) actitud preventiva. Los resultados muestran que, para los entrevistados, el plagio es definido como el acto de “copiar algo que no es de uno”, “hacer trampa” o “robar”. Asimismo, concluyeron que plagiar es una práctica comú...

To address graduate writing pedagogy in technical communication, this article reports on a study of 14 award-winning dissertations in the field. By treating dissertations as cultural artifacts constitutive of the educational contexts in which they are authored, this study reads dissertation methodology sections as research narratives to understand how we prepare new scholars and to examine the changing nature of what we value in the field.

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) developed around the understanding that writing is a developmental, incremental procedure that is intimately linked to thinking. Two major branches in the WAC movement are the write-to-learn focus, or the push to incorporate writing tasks solely as strategies for teaching and learning course material, and the use of writing-in-the-disciplines courses to improve students ' writing and communication skills. WAC is important at two-year colleges because of the varied nature of their mission: They seek to prepare students for further study, but also offer associate degrees in arts'and sciences and certificate programs that prepare students for the world of work. Research estimates that 607. of new jobs will require solid reading and writing skills, but only one in four employees will have them. In planning a WAC program, it is important that the program: (1) be a grassroots effort started by interested faculty; (2) tie program goals to the c...

For many years, writing centers have based their pedagogy on "collaboration." Now it is time to reflectively examine whether tutorial collaborations actually correspond to those definitions on which it is generally assumed they are based. Current practices assume that "collaborative" practices include non-authoritative pedagogy that fosters students' independence to compose and promotes their ability to critically assess their own writing. But is this true? Brian Street ("Literacy in Theory and Practice"), Suzanne Clark and Lisa Ede ("Collaboration, Resistance, and the Teaching of Writing") suggest that teachers look at their classroom collaborations and determirv_ just what it is that they are promoting. Unless they do, they risk maintaining and supporting the very structures of disempowerment they claim to resist. (Transcripts of two exchanges between a writing-center tutor and a student, and a five-item bibliography are included.) (SAM)

When we began discussing our vision for a collection on information literacy (IL), our initial conversations revolved around the incredible amount of scholarship and practice that already existed in both Writing Studies (WS) and in Library/Information Science (LIS). Yet, while librarians, writing faculty, and other disciplinary faculty had presented and/or published together, there was still not enough cross-over in disciplinary literature addressed to both faculty and librarian audiences. One of our goals for this collection, then, was to bring together the rich scholarship and pedagogy from multiple perspectives and disciplines to provide a broader and more complex understanding of IL in the second decade of the 21st century. Further, we hoped that a collection that bridged the disciplinary divide would advance the notion of shared responsibility and accountability for the teaching, learning, and research of IL in the academy: faculty, librarians, administrators, and external stakeholders such as accrediting agencies and the businesses/industries that employ our graduates. As we issued the call for contributions for the collection, our view of IL was guided by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education (IL Standards) which defines IL as the ability to "determine the extent of information needed, access the needed information effectively and efficiently, evaluate information and its sources critically, incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base, use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose, understand the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information legally" (ACRL, 2000). Widely cited since its formal approval by the ACRL Board, the IL Standards has seen widespread acceptance by librarians, faculty, administrators, and accrediting bodies. As a result, librarians and faculty have created strong partnerships to develop pedagogy related to IL and the IL Standards have been adapted to meet disciplinary contexts. However, the IL Standards also have faced considerable criticism as both research and practice began to highlight and illustrate the shortcomings of a standards-and competencies-based approach. Critiques of the IL Standards, theoretically and research-based, have focused on the de-contextualized nature of standards that potentially emphasize a prescribed set of skills. Research The Framework for IL draws upon both threshold concepts (foundational concepts within a discipline that serve as portals to thinking and practice) and the concept of metaliteracy (Mackey & Jacobson, 2011; Mackey & Jacobson, 2014). Metaliteracy presents a vision for IL as an overarching literacy that places students in the role of both consumer and producer of information within today's collaborative information environments. Metaliteracy also emphasizes four domains of engagement within the information environment: behavioral, affective, cognitive, and metacognitive with metacognition as particularly important for individuals to become self-directed learners required in today's rapidly changing landscape. Authors in Section I bring together past theory and practice to situate IL for us by articulating what the Framework for IL means for the evolution of IL pedagogy, research, and assessment. Just over a decade ago, in one of the few notable pieces of scholarship to cross disciplinary boundaries, Rolf Norgaard contextualized IL SECTION II. RESEARCHING INFORMATION LITERACY Section II focuses on large-scale research projects that are contributing to our understanding of IL, in particular, our understanding of students' ability to use information to construct knowledge. The threshold concept of Scholarship as Conversation is clearly evident in the work of these researchers and scholars. Sandra Jamieson leads off Section II with a discussion of results of Citation Project research concerning the kinds of sources students selected for source-based papers in first-year writing, how they incorporated them, and the implications for IL. Following this chapter, Katt Blackwell-Starnes reports on the results of a pilot study for the LILAC Project revealing the impact of students' focus on final product rather than process when completing a research project. Karen Gocsik, Laura Braunstein, and Cynthia Tobery report on the results of a six-year study to research and code wiki assignments to determine how students analyze and use sources. Then

In every rhetoric and writing studies conference, the authors of this symposium have heard variations of the same sentiment: Ugh, scripted presentations are so boring, so no, I didn't bring any access copies for the audience. You have to consider the cost/benefit analysis of each access expense. Registration costs have increased, but that's largely because ASL [American Sign Language] interpreters are so costly. These phrases are often casually spoken, sometimes quietly just between two people. Other times, these are spoken by conference organizers to a large audience as a justification for increased registration fees. We've heard these sentiments uttered so many times, and with every utterance we hear the same thing: Accessibility detracts from the conference experiences of nondisabled people. Disabled people are expensive burdens. Your presence is not worth the time, money, or effort required. People's value cannot be boiled down to the expense of their accommodations. We are not costs, and if we want the field of rhetoric and composition to grow, we must make space for the presence of disabled, sick, neurodivergent, and mad scholar-teacher-activists, especially those who embody multiple marginalized identities. We want to reframe conversations about access in our professional spaces and beyond. The kind of access we are talking about is not static, individualized, or bureaucratic. Rather, we echo Elizabeth Brewer et al.'s call for a culture of access in composition studies, a culture that transforms. We invite you to join us in building a culture that, in the words of Mia Mingus, prioritizes access in the service of love, justice, connection, and liberation ("Disability Justice").

In this essay, we discuss our experience as graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in a first-year writing program with an explicitly anti-racist pedagogy. The growing literature on critical pedagogy focuses on the instructor-undergraduate student dynamic but does not address the necessary role of GTAs in implementing anti-racist pedagogy. We use feminist theory to contend that care is an inherent component of anti-racist pedagogy and that GTAs are integral actors in providing that care. We highlight the indispensable role of GTAs in navigating the complexities of larger classes as anti-racist pedagogy is scaled up beyond the individual classroom and instructor. We conclude by providing three possible solutions to address this challenge.

This article draws on an interview study of recent PhDs in rhetoric and writing studies
on their experiences during the pandemic. The faculty and staff we talked with stepped
into the leadership gaps in their institutions to build grassroots coalitions with students,
colleagues, and community partners. The vision of leadership that emerged from these
discussions centered on listening, collaboration, and transparency. This article goes on
to argue that the leadership of next-gen faculty will be essential for addressing the
challenging opportunities facing English departments: revising declining majors to
engage new-majority students, developing collaborative leadership of TT and NTT
faculty to improve labor conditions, and expanding the mission of English studies to
engage with the communities our institutions purport to serve.

The research aimed to explore beliefs of sociolinguistic competence from Indonesian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. Two teachers were carefully chosen to participate in the research. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, analyzed, and interpreted using the critical descriptive method. The research finds that EFL teachers express their beliefs in various terms, ideologies, and perspectives. The result indicates that the EFL teachers' beliefs about sociolinguistic competence are equivalent to the concepts of spatial repertoire, principled-polycentrism, resourceful speakers, and sociolinguistics as mobility. It also indicates that EFL teachers' pedagogical affordances in determining learning objectives, selecting materials and media for learning, implementing classroom strategies, and choosing appropriate evaluation for their teaching are influenced by their beliefs of sociolinguistic competence. The research suggests that Indonesian EFL teachers should be awarded the freedom to develop sociolinguistic competence based on their classroom context and learners' heterogeneity. With the presence of a national curriculum (known as K13) that gives more spaces for sociolinguistic competence to take place, teachers should transform their paradigm of seeing classroom interaction in EFL classroom to be more sociolinguistically-aware to transform the static, predetermined , and motionless definition of sociolinguistic competence to a more dynamic, fluid, and varying. These transformations can be made by imparting sociolinguistic competence in teachers' education and teachers' professional development programs.

The policy, in effect in its present form since 1982, places heavy emphasis upon the conventions or "mechanics" of writing Edited American English. The status of the place of grammar in the writing class in American education has had its ups and downs, especially in the last hundred years. Researchers have tried to demonstrate both sides of the question of whether the study of grammar contributes to good writing. The debate of teaching grammar in'a composition classroom has devolved into a debate of mechanics. Researchers and composition instructors have also debated the value of and the best procedures for marking students' errors. A first-time freshman composition instructor at LCC examined the effectiveness of the mandated grading procedures over the course of a semester. Results indicated: (1) no significant difference between the students' performance on Essay 1 and Essay 5; (2) students' grade on mechanics did not predict their performance on the essay in general; and (3) some students made fewer of some kinds of errors only to make more of other kinds of errors. Avoiding grammar instruction because some studies suggest its inefficacy seems biased. If a particular student or section of a class needs instruction, it is irresponsible not to provide it. (Contains 35 references and 9 tables of data.) (RS)

The policy, in effect in its present form since 1982, places heavy emphasis upon the conventions or "mechanics" of writing Edited American English. The status of the place of grammar in the writing class in American education has had its ups and downs, especially in the last hundred years. Researchers have tried to demonstrate both sides of the question of whether the study of grammar contributes to good writing. The debate of teaching grammar in'a composition classroom has devolved into a debate of mechanics. Researchers and composition instructors have also debated the value of and the best procedures for marking students' errors. A first-time freshman composition instructor at LCC examined the effectiveness of the mandated grading procedures over the course of a semester. Results indicated: (1) no significant difference between the students' performance on Essay 1 and Essay 5; (2) students' grade on mechanics did not predict their performance on the essay in general; and (3) some students made fewer of some kinds of errors only to make more of other kinds of errors. Avoiding grammar instruction because some studies suggest its inefficacy seems biased. If a particular student or section of a class needs instruction, it is irresponsible not to provide it. (Contains 35 references and 9 tables of data.) (RS)